Organizational psychologists and researchers have observed that micromanagement leadership is associated with negative workplace outcomes: low employee morale, decreased productivity, staff disengagement, low motivation, and employee turnover.

An organization with multiple layers of supervision may foster micromanagement. Organizations where micromanagement is tolerated or even encouraged may place a high value on rule-following and top-down, autocratic decision-making. Such organizations foster managing up (decisions made to please those above you) rather than managing down (decisions made to foster employee autonomy and work productivity).

The person doing the actual work is supervised by supervisors supervising the supervision of the supervisor. Each supervisor may have to justify their position and, therefore, engage in unnecessary surveillance of employees. This, in turn, promotes a culture of distrust.

DeLeon and Tripodi discuss the philosophy of micromanagement in the U.S. Army. They describe the Army’s style as bureaucratic, driven by the fear of failure and uncertainty. Paradoxically, the Army operates under uncertainty. The military even has an acronym for this: VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity)! DeLeon and Tripodi observe that the Army’s risk aversion leads to excessive oversight and control of (and distrust of) subordinates to protect the leader from being punished for failures.

Moreover, while micromanagement stands in contrast to written directives, in reality, performance appraisals, policies, and promotion criteria entrench this style. DeLeon and Tripodi observe that risk aversion becomes a “game of exercising constant mitigation to avoid mistakes as opposed to working toward success as a team.”........

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